What about this one?
Jamie Lewis 8 October 2004
English 350 Final Draft
That Bitch Has Problems
Jeezus, man. I gotta quit talking to this bitch. She says she loves me all the fucking time, but she never says that she’s sorry. I ain’t never cheated on her, even though I’ve had plenty of chances. Cuz I thought she was special. But her? She gets her rocks off with other guys, but smokes my weed on the weekends. Seriously. What the fuck?
All night she talks to me on the phone, trying to convince me that I shouldn’t dump her sorry ass. She says she loves me and that I’m the only one that gets her and she didn’t mean to do it. I guess she was just trying to help, but she still didn’t say she was sorry.
My dad died when I was sixteen, but at least he left a roof over my head. The trailer is in my name, so now me and my buddy Jim live in it, and sometimes some of our other friends, or whatever bitch we’re sleeping with at the time. My buddy Jim, man, he’s like a brother to me. Me an him are a team, so I don’t mind sharing the place with him. It ain’t very big and I think there’s mold on the white walls, but it’s home an’ I don’t care. Landlord don’t give us no grief about bein’ a couple a kids living alone n’ stuff, cuz we smoke him out every once in awhile, an’ he doesn’t know we got a phat farm growing in each of our closets.
You gotta be careful growing weed, or as we growers call it: delta nine tetrohydra-cannabibnal. You gotta have the water flow just right, cuz it can’t stew in it’s own juice, if you get me. That’s in the hydraulics. Gotta drain it just so, and baby ‘em to get the biggest crowns. I love the smell of it, and Jim says it reminds him of Christmas. Prolly cuz at Christmas we’d all get a forty or an eight ball in our stocking and enjoy one hell of a ham.
Takes all my time to grow this shit. Sometimes me and Jim’ll get hired for some day labor or something. Can’t get a real job cuz a the piss test, and someone’s gotta grow the stuff anyway. When we do work, it’s mostly haulin’ dirt or fixin’ something. Between me an Jim we can fix just about anything. Especially cars. I’ve had a few of ‘em myself, but I ain’t got one now cuz I loaned it to Jim and he wrapped it round a tree. He should prolly drink a little less next time, the stupid fuck.
After I got off the phone with her, I cleaned up the place. Me an’ Jim are kinda slobs, sometimes, and after a kegger or two, this place reeks to high hell. Had one the other day cuz it was Mikey’s birthday, and since he was the only one of us who had a job, he bought himself a 25-gallon drum of Budweiser. And me an’ Jim played the music and other people joined in till we all got bored of that. We smoked a few bowls, listened to Zeppelin, and most of us got laid. Even Mikey. All in all, an awesome night.
I got fucked that night too. I mean that both ways. I got laid and I got fucked. Cuz apparently I wasn’t enough for her or something since she went home with someone else. I’d only had seven or eight beers, and could have drove her home. She said she was too wasted anyway, and what would her dad say? Till one of her high school friends got there and she remembered school was on Monday. I ain’t got that problem since I haven’t been in school for over a year now, so I can never keep track. That son of a bitch was all over her, but I was too fucked up by then to realize it, and when she went home with him I was already passed out. Some party.
First time we kissed, man, I remember that day. Me an’ Jim were at home, waiting for a deal, when three black guys from the city knocked on the old door and came in. Funny cuz we were only expecting one. All I knew was that this was a big score and a new client, and I needed money for the electric bill. We agreed on a price. While Jim stayed up front playing Hostess, I went in the back of the house to get the scale: you can’t fuck a brother over and live to tell the tale. When I got back in the living room, they and Jim were all sitting on our ratty old couches we had lining the room. Jim had loaded his glass pipe and they were all hitting it and passing it round the room.
“How do you guys want it bagged?” I asked, still in salesman mode.
“Twenty bags of forty, and don’ skimp on us!” I could hear a bit of a threat in that, and kept weighing and bagging carefully until the pipe got to me. One bowl ain’t really enough for five people, but I took a hit to be polite. If I passed up, they would think there was something wrong with it, and there ain’t. The thick smoke choked my lungs and stabbed my throat, but I held as long as I could. I broke into a spasm of coughing as I exhaled, but I always felt pride in my work, and this was some damn good weed.
With twenty bags of forty done, I went to put the scale away and give it some care. I heard the door knock and open, and then a female voice. Then I heard Jim say that I was in back, and her footsteps were coming toward me.
She had the quietest knock. I let her in. I wasn’t worried about her, cuz I’d known her since I had started high school, and we used to play together in grade school. She was a good girl: good in school, good looking, good hearted. She visited periodically, but since I had to drop school, she only came once or twice a year, to catch up.
She seemed nervous about those guys, and I was too as she hugged hello. I always thought it was weird that she hugged me, cuz I guess I wasn’t used to it. But she used to say she thought I just needed it. I was thinking of that when I heard crashing noises coming from the front room. I started running when I heard Jim yelling.
“Shut the fuck up. Nobodys gonna do nuthin!”
“What’s that bitch doing here? You gonna squeal on us, cracker? I’ll fuckin’ kill you if she runs to the cops!”
“I said ain’t nobody gonna run to the cops, man. Jeezus will you calm down? Just give us the money, take your stash and go.”
By the time I got there, the biggest of the black guys had Jim by the shirt, and was gearing up to hit him. He said, “Nobody is gonna tell me and my boys what to do!”
Jim ain’t a big guy, and that brother was gonna kill him, but he only got one punch in before I hit him right in the mother-fuckin’ face. His two buddies jumped in and it was an all out brawl. There was lots of yelling. Jim kicked one guy straight in the nut sack, and I broke a guys nose. I know, they’re cheap tricks, but nothing breaks up a fight faster than putting a guys balls out of commission. They grabbed as much of the bagged weed as they could and ran out into the night.
I glowered at them running away like fuckin’ pansies. I was pissed about the money, and Jim an’ me yelled curse after curse at them, until I felt a soft hand in mine.
“Stop it,” she said, “You’re bleeding.”
She pulled me into the bathroom and sat me on the edge of the bathtub. My heart thumped hard in my ears as I tried to calm the adrenalin. I had broken out into a sweat and was breathing hard when she put a bit of Kleenex up to my nose. She dabbed it gently, she wouldn’t look up at me, and I could tell she was crying.
“I can’t believe you still do this stuff. You have to be more careful. Those guys had guns and would have killed you for half that much. God, I’d never seen that much marijuana in my life!”
I pushed her hand away, realizing something about her I’d never bothered to figure out before. I didn’t realize that she cared about me.
“I’m trying to save you,” she said.
“I know. Thank you.” I touched her wet cheek. Then I kissed her.
We came together under sweat and blood, so it’s no wonder things went bad. That bitch changed, though. When we hooked up, she was so sweet. She didn’t like the whole weed thing and never wanted to be around when we smoked. Hell, she didn’t like the drinking and the parties and the girls who showed up here. She always wanted to go out and she didn’t want to hang out with my friends. After awhile, she started asking me questions: where the hell did I go? Why the hell can’t we go out somewhere? When will I go back to school? Have I thought about a career in this or that? The answer to every question was that I didn’t fucking know.
It was weird when she started smoking out with us, when she used to not even touch the pipe we were using. It wasn’t all the sudden, like. It just kinda happened. First she started smoking, then she started partying with us. Me an’ Jim taught her to drink whiskey and throw a punch. You know, stuff a girl ought to know. It was weird, and I don’t know why she was doing it or why we went along with it. I guess she wanted to be closer to me. She always told me she loved me, but she never ever told me she was sorry.
Fuck her. Even after talking on the phone to her all night, I’m still thinking about her. I wish my dad were still alive. Too bad Jim is out at a job. I needed to talk, or I needed to forget or something. Really I needed advice. So I did the next best thing.
I keep a small stash of my best stuff in a little wooden box that she gave me. It used to have a CD in it-a birthday present inside a birthday present. Now all it had was a few ounces, some papers, and my favorite green lighter. Irony. I rolled myself a joint and sat outside on the porch. It was still early and the trailer park was quiet. I sighed as I sat on the empty keg and lit up. It hurt to think about her and I needed it to stop. I knew the answers weren’t in the smoke, but at least I could relax.
A two door Honda pulled into the lawn. It was her. She knew we didn’t bother with the formality of a driveway. She jumped out, but someone else was left in the car. I wondered who she was driving around now and cheating on me with.
She put a twenty on the rail in front of my reddened eyes, “I need some.”
I was stoned by then, and moved slowly. Maybe that was all I was to her? “I don’t want your mother-fucking money.” I got up to weigh her a bag and she followed me in.
“You cleaned since last time...”
“Yeah, I’m not a mother-fucking animal.”
“I know that.”
I weighed out my worst stash nice and slow. She didn’t know the difference, and I bet the ass-wipe in the car didn’t either. She wouldn’t know if I shorted her a few ounces. But I was too stoned to be mad. And tired. I wanted to sleep it off. To sleep her off. I didn’t even put my shit away before I fell into the couch.
She didn’t sit, so I knew she wasn’t staying long. She was pissed, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
I thought if I blinked a few times, she would go the fuck away, and I wouldn’t have to talk to her anymore. But it didn’t work. She always thought she was better than me. She stood their holding her baggie looking irritated, like I was a waste of her goddam time. I tried to explain. “Jeezus,” I said, “You’ve never said you were sorry.”
She looked surprised I’d said that, and looked at the floor a second, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
Man. That bitch has problems.